The Good Times Are Killing Me

I met this guy at a neighborhood bar in the summer of 2003. I'd been single for.. well, probably about 2 weeks, really. My boyfriend and I had been so on and off that I honestly can't remember when we really broke up for the last time, but I know that on my birthday that year we were more or less together. I was optimistic at the time, because I was still hopelessly in love with him, but I knew that he was seeing other people and I just wasn't the person he wanted to be with anymore. I held on for as long as I could, but when I was out with a newly formed group of very eclectic friends I had the strange new experience of really being "hit on" in a bar. I'd been pretty oblivious to that whole phenomenon in the past, because I'd always been there with my boyfriend and hadn't noticed if it had happened before. But this guy was sweet, he was cute, and he was interested in a way I was really not used to. He made me feel like the most important person in the room, which was a theme for the next couple of months. Anyone I'd been seeing before that was someone from work, or a friend first, and I never had the nervousness and excitement of getting to know someone from meeting out of the blue like that. Sure, we had mutual friends in the city - he was a musician in Halifax, I was..well, I knew musicians in Halifax - but it was a delicate and meaningful couple hours of conversation, compliments, and subtle touching of the hands that made it memorable. Even though it took me about 20 minutes to remember when exactly this was, I can remember our conversations and the first things he said to me. We slept together that night, but literally just slept together, completely clothed. I think I wanted to make him mean more than just a possible one night stand. The next morning started out awkward, but he insisted on taking me to breakfast at a cafe (the first time I ever saw a bagel with hummus on it, strangely enough). He held my hand as we walked across the commons, which I also thought was an incredibly sweet gesture. I didn't hear from him for a week or so, which started me on an obsessive thought process that I'm sure is common to all of us who fall for people too quickly. I mean, I'm not someone who starts planning my wedding after a couple dates or anything, but whenever I meet someone new all I want to do is talk to that person and have that series of Firsts. We went out a few more times, mostly making dinner and drinking too much wine at his place in front of a fire in September and October when Halifax gets that damp cold for the first time. He was sweet and charming, and I was overwhelmed. At the time, I was planning on leaving in a few months to move to Ireland, so things didn't get too serious and eventually we stopped calling each other. I met someone else, that got serious (even though it shouldn't have), and I ended up staying here. A few months later, he came back to that same neighborhood bar and sat down with my boyfriend and I. After an awkward few minutes of him trying to put his arm around me and his hand on my leg under the table, my poor boyfriend got the whole explanation and I took this guy aside and explained that I was now with someone else. The expression on his face was heartbreaking. He explained that the only reason he stopped calling me was that he thought I was going to be out of the country in a few weeks and he didn't want to get to like me any more than he already did. That was the first time I really hurt someone like that; it was completely inconsiderate and selfish and I hadn't given it a thought when I started seeing someone a couple weeks later. Even though I didn't know him all that well, it was a situation that has stuck with me for years. I ran into him only a couple more (awkward) times; I think he decided to start going somewhere else. I'm not narcissistic enough to think that it was entirely because of me, but I think I may have been a factor. When things started going downhill (and finally crashed at the bottom of the proverbial hill) with the boyfriend, I called him one more time. I got his answering machine. The outgoing message was recorded by a woman who was also living there, which made me hopeful that he was then happy with someone who wouldn't just let him fall to the side.
He sent me a message on the internet (the inter-what, you say?) today. It was simple, just saying hi and that he'd noticed something I'd posted to a friend a few days ago. But it made me think about all the people that get hurt unintentionally, and how much it really fucking blows.